Gant Henry: biography, history, achievements and interesting facts

Henry Gant (history, biography, the researcher's activities are described below) is the author of the same diagram in management. Today it became a tool for project management, in the 1920s it was a world innovation. But the legacy of Gant was not only this. He became the first ideologist of the social responsibility of business and the predecessor of the school of human relations. This article will describe his brief biography and main ideas.

Life and career

Henry Gant was born in Maryland in 1861. The boy's parents were well-to-do farmers. Henry's childhood years fell on the Civil War, which had a significant impact on family well-being. Gants lived in constant deprivation. After graduating from the Johns Hopkins Institute, Henry worked as a teacher. In 1884, a young man learned a mechanical engineer and got a job as a designer.

In 1887, Henry Gant became assistant engineer F. Taylor in the Midvale Steel Company. Then the young man headed the foundry. The first time Taylor and Gant cooperated very fruitfully, so later Henry went to the head first in the Simonds Rolling Company, and then - in "Bethlehem Steel".

Fame came to the researcher in 1900. Gant became a successful consultant, specializing in various aspects of management, including very controversial. And since 1917 Henry entered the government commission. In its composition, he advised such military factories as the Emergean Fleet Corporation and Frankford Arsenal. The explorer died in 1919.

Basic Ideas

To very many people, Gant Henry is known as Taylor's apprentice and popularizer in the school of scientific management. At the beginning of their cooperation, the young man was engaged in technical problems of management. The researcher was convinced that only the use of scientific analysis with respect to each aspect of the labor process will ensure production efficiency. Henry's overall contribution to management can be expressed in four concepts.

1. Reward for work

In 1901, Gant introduced his system of premium pay. He developed it on the basis of Taylor's concept of piecework remuneration. The latter provided for a number of fines for those who did not fulfill the plan.

Gant Henry modified this concept. According to his system, during the implementation of the day plan, the employee received a bonus to a regular salary. If the required amount of work was not performed, then only the salary was saved. This really motivated employees to earn more and many times increased their efficiency.

The result of the application of this concept was the doubling of production indicators. Also Henry found out that a very important aspect of management is interest in employees and their morale.

2. Perspective of the worker

Gant continued the research and, based on their results, improved the concept. So, for the work done on time (or faster), he set a time-based payment plus a percentage for the time saved. For example, when a two-hour assignment was completed, the employee received a three-hour salary.

3. The diagram

It has become an effective tool for fixing the fulfillment of the plan by the workers. For each employee daily accounting was recorded. If the plan was executed, a black line was used, in the opposite case - red. In 1917, Gant Henry faced the problem of coordinating various tasks in the implementation of state orders by military plants. Having carried out a number of studies, he realized that the plan should be oriented not on time but on quantitative indicators.

As a result, the researcher came up with a diagram reflecting the distribution of work by periods. Thus, the bosses have a means of planning the activity with an indication of the deadlines for completing each of its stages.

Gantt charts were used in different projects to demonstrate the process of accomplishing the task. As an example, take a small plan to repair the office space. This process is divided into several stages:

• Defining a range of quality standards and responsibilities, time and costs.
• Informing customers and staff.
• Moving to another room.
• Preparation of the office.
• Carrying out repairs.

For each stage, the time periods are indicated, which are displayed in the diagram. Thus, it turns into an excellent graphical tool for controlling and planning production work.

4. Social responsibility of business

After Taylor's death, the researcher completely abandoned the key ideas of scientific management and focused on the role of the firm as such. Also Henry Gant, whose biography is known to many enterprise managers, studied the function of leadership. Over time, the researcher became convinced that management imposes colossal obligations on society, and a profitable company must make a certain contribution to its well-being.

Modern look

Henry Gant, whose brief biography is presented above, was a social activist and prolific writer. He is the author of many articles for the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. One of them ("Training workers in the skills of cooperation and industrial work") has become a rare penetration into the problems of human relations arising during management.

Gant believed that the leader should be perceived as his teacher. Thanks to this position, Henry was ranked among the supporters of the behavioral school, placing him on a par with Mayo and Owen. The idea of the company's responsibility to society made Gant the first adherent to the concept of socially responsible business. But in the history he entered first of all as the author of the chart of the same name.

Shortly before his death, Gant Henry began to view the firm's activities in a broader political and state context. And the researcher's theories began to be criticized and blamed for vagueness. Probably, at that time Gant was torn between two ideas: socialist order and services for an appropriate reward.

From his innovation, Henry never got a profit. The researcher's books contain diagrams showing "work in development", and not the design schemes that are known to us today. True, he received a medal "For outstanding service" from the government. Well, the idea of the diagram was popularized by Wallis Clark, who worked in the consulting company Gant. The book he wrote was subsequently translated into eight languages.